Blessing or Suffering – you decide!

When the Dali Lama was asked to give some thoughts about 2009, one of the things he said was, “Not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.” In the book, “Believe in what you do” by Glenn Van Ekeren, the author tells a story about this very point. The story is about a family from Scotland. Their dream was to take a holiday to the United States on an ocean liner. They spent years saving money for their dream holiday and finally could book their tickets for their trip. Seven days before they were to depart, the youngest son was bitten by a dog. The boy was quarantined for 14 days and the family’s holiday had to be cancelled. The father shed many tears of disappointment and cursed both his son and God for their misfortune. Five days later, the tragic news spread throughout Scotland – the Titanic had sunk. When the father heard the news, he hugged his son and thanked him for saving the family. In this case, a tragedy was turned into a blessing.

So often in life we experience tragedies or suffering and fail to move past them. We sit with the pain and spend an enormous amount of time and energy reliving the trauma, playing it over and over again in our minds. One is so engrossed in the pain that we rarely look for or find the blessing in the suffering.

There are many schools of thought on how to accept and move past trauma in our lives. Many therapists and counselors recommend writing about the incident that has caused your trauma. If it is a person that has aggrieved you, write and tell them how you feel about the situation and then tell them in the letter that you forgive them. One then burns the letter to symbolize letting go and closure. Others say you should envisage your traumatic experience captured inside a huge silver balloon. You then picture yourself letting go the silver balloon. In your minds eye, you watch the silver balloon float away into the distance. The floating away of the silver balloon symbolizes the letting go of the trauma in order for healing to take place.

A few years ago, I attended one of The More to Life foundation workshops. They taught many techniques on how to move past stress and trauma in one’s life. There was one particular technique that I liked. It involved using the mind and the physical body. Firstly, the person is to have the situation or issue in their mind. They then say, “I refuse to accept this situation,” at the same time physically trying to push the situation or issue (in their minds eye) away with their arms and hands. The more physical effort and vocal the intention, the more powerful the exercise can be. Once this has been repeated a few times, the person feels emotionally and physically tired. This symbolizes surrender. The person then sits very quietly and says repeatedly, “I accept this situation.” By “accepting” the situation it allows the person to get past the emotions and start to look at ways of dealing with the situation or issue.

In Korea they have a beautiful everyday expression, “Gamsa-hapnida.” (pronounced gum-sa ham-nida) It simply means, thank you. I have found this everyday expression to be extremely useful to me. In Neuro-Linguistic Psychology (NLP), we have a saying that says, “There is no failure only learning.” Whenever I encounter a situation or person that causes me trauma or stress, I envision saying in my minds eye, “Gamsa-hapnida” to that person for bringing that situation or issue to my attention.  The more emotionally charged the situation or event is, the more times I repeat Gamsa-hapnida. Doing this allows me to remove the judgment from the situation or person, and thus the emotion. I’m now able to look at the learning without the emotion. In other words, seeing the blessing in the suffering

As an anonymous author once wrote, “I thank everyone that has caused me to suffer, without you I would have no reason to express myself.”

Gamsa-hapnida!

The Ripple Effect

In the movie Evan Almighty, God (Morgan Freeman) tells Evan to build an ARK and that the ARK will save humanity. After Evan had built the ARK and the “flood” hadn’t destroyed the earth, Evan questioned God as to why he made him build it. God said it wasn’t so much the Ark that was important but the Act of Random Kindness. That’s all it takes to get the ball rolling – an act of random kindness. Imagine if everyone did one act of random kindness every day? Wouldn’t the world be a better place? We all know the story about dropping a pebble into the centre of the pond and the ripples travel on the surface to the edge of the pond. When the ripples reach the edge of the pond they go beneath the surface of the water and return to the centre of the pond. Scientists would say this is ‘cause and effect.’ In Christianity one could equate this analogy to ‘what you reap you sow’. In Eastern religion the equivalent would be karma. So one could say that science, as well as spirituality or religion backs up the notion that whatever you put out there, it is going to come back to you. Furthermore, it is said that there are only two emotions. Namely, Love and fear. Love comes from God and fear does not. God gives us free will to choose whether we want to operate from a place of Love or fear. However, we need to bear in mind that with choices come consequences. In the Christian Bible it mentions that the wages of sin is death. One should not interpret this as a physical death, but rather a spiritual death. A person is cut-off from God. For the purpose of simplicity, one could argue that sin is the equivalent to operating from a place of fear. If one is continually operating from a place of fear, one is cut-off from Love, namely God, because the ‘wages of sin is death’. If we go back to our analogy of the dropping of the pebble into the pond, it means that the fear we are putting out is going to come back to us. Therefore, it makes perfect sense for a person to operate from a place of Love. After all, who doesn’t want to receive Love? As mentioned earlier, God gives us free will. He / She does not judge or label a choice good or bad. That’s a human thing. God merely holds us accountable for our choices through Spiritual Laws like karma and ‘you reap what you sow’. While Evan Almighty was building the ARK, he went through many trials and tribulations. However, he started to operate from a place of Love by doing acts of random kindness and things started to fall into place for him, his family and the community as a whole. So you see, if we start by just doing one small act of random kindness, we not only make the world a better place for ourselves, but for our community as well. To use a Ghandi quote that has been given much press lately, “Be the change that you want to see in the world”.

Mind Matters

We are already half way through 2010. A time of year when most people have long forgotten about their New Year’s resolutions and list of goals that they had set for 2010. So often or not, we lose interest in these resolutions and goals that we set, and they tend to fall by the wayside or we simply don’t achieve them. Take an example of a running goal. We may have the most advanced training and dietary programmes, but still not achieve the desired result. In order to achieve our running goals, we certainly need training and dietary programmes. However, we also need to take care of our own mental limitations.

In 1974 Timothy Gallway published a book called The Inner Game of Tennis. He mentions that athletes have two opponents. An outer opponent on the track, court or field. An inner opponent being their mental limitations. You win the inner game first in order to win the outer game. To help win the inner game, runners should have an awareness of their running values and beliefs, as well as mentally rehearsing the successful outcome of their goals. You need to ensure that your goals are congruent with your values and beliefs. A simple exercise of determining and listing your running values can assist in goal achievement.

As an example, your goal might be to run your first marathon. Your values for running might be fun, social, enjoyment, health, etc. Getting up at 5am and running six times a week in order to run your first marathon might not be fun, enjoyable or even sociable for you. Your goal would therefore not be congruent with your values and thus increase the chances of you losing interest or not achieving your goal. Our beliefs about running also play a large part in whether we achieve our goals or not. Sports commentators on many occasions have asked sports people about their success after an event, and so often we hear their response that they or their team believed in themselves. Anthony Robbins is a well-renowned peak performance coach to company executives, professional sports teams, as well as to a number of prominent world figures. In his book, Unlimited Power, he mentions that what we believe to be true, what we believe is possible, becomes what’s true, and becomes what’s possible. Belief is nothing but a feeling of certainty about what something means. If we have a goal of completing our first marathon, and we believe this to be “an uphill battle”, we have “pushed ourselves a little too far this time” or “I don’t think I can do this”, we will experience those difficulties and may not attain our goal.

Finally, it goes without saying that goals need to be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timed). Furthermore, it is also useful for the person to be able to mentally rehearse the successful outcome of their goal. This can be done by visualising what it would be like to achieve that goal using all the senses. What do you see, feel hear, smell and taste. As you imagine yourself in that winning situation. The more this picture of achievement lights you up, the more motivated you will be to attain that goal.

Mike Lipkin is one of South Africa’s leading motivators and trainers. In the book that he co-authored with Eric Parker, You’re the Boss, they mention that one of the most powerful psychological discoveries of the 20^th century, is that your mind cannot tell the difference to what really happens to you and what you imagine is happening to you. First you win in your mind and then you win in reality.

In the words of Logan Pearsell Smith, “There are two things to aim at in life, first to get what you want, and after that, to enjoy it.” Let the rest of 2010 be the year that you overcome your mental limitations in order to win your internal game and be more successful at achieving your goals.

“They can because they think they can” – Virgil.

Maybe

Maybe God has already sent someone to me,

Maybe she is as beautiful as can be,

Maybe, maybe.

Maybe she is nurturing, caring and fun,

Maybe we will only know once it is all said and done,

Maybe, maybe.

Maybe she is refined and sensual,

Maybe I will learn to appreciate her potential,

Maybe, maybe.

Maybe she is intelligent and full of energy,

Maybe I need to be alert and ready,

Maybe, maybe.

Maybe she is broken just like me,

Maybe our healing will set us free,

Maybe, maybe.

Maybe this is all well and good,

Maybe I should shout, “Halleluiah! God is good”

Maybe, maybe.